Mobilian had hand in creation of blockbuster 'Avatar'

Courtesy of Anthony DavisMobile native Anthony Davis works as a digital compositor in the Hollywood film industry, and had a hand in James Cameron's epic "Avatar."It’s not as far from Mobile to Pandora as you might think: At least one Mobile native has spent considerable time there.

Ultimately this space-traveler hopes to return home with a rare and potentially lucrative commodity: A slice of the multimillion-dollar digital special effects industry essential to Hollywood filmmaking.

Pandora is the faraway moon where the action of the blockbuster movie “Avatar” takes place. The movie’s success has been driven in no small part by its innovative special effects, which blend live-action footage and computer generated material with a degree of realism never seen before.

The images of the film are made up of countless elements, from real actors working on real sets to flora and fauna that exist only within computers. The task of putting it all together is where people like 1994 McGill-Toolen graduate Anthony R. Davis come in.

As a digital compositor, he was one of the people who worked on final assembly of the film. Compositing is big job in an effects-heavy film, but Davis was quick to say that his individual role is small.

“It takes a team of artists,” he said. “It’s a huge pipeline.”

He’s also clear that in their work, compositors aspire to be invisible.

“The thing about my job, you would never know I did it,” he said. “You wouldn’t know it was there. That’s when it’s successful.”

The average moviegoer doesn’t have to ponder everything that goes into a composite image. He doesn’t have to calculate whether the light falling on a human actor is the same as the light falling on the computer-generated tree beside him, for example, or whether a patch of skin stays the right color as it passes from shadow into light.

Yet the average human’s eyes tend to realize that something looks fake, when such details aren’t right. Which is why digital compositors have to sweat the small stuff, frame by frame by frame. Davis acknowledged that it can be tedious work, even if you are helping construct a revolutionary science-fiction action adventure.

“It takes a lot of dedication,” he said, mentioning 70-hour weeks and 36-hour shifts he’s pulled on various projects. “You have to be passionate about what you do because of the high demand of hours.”

Davis’ interest goes back to his high school days. After leaving McGill-Toolen, he earned an associate’s degree in computer science at Bishop State, then a bachelor of fine arts in computer art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Then, like countless other dreamers, he moved to California, waiting tables and doing freelance graphic work while looking for a break. “It was a rough start,” he said.

His break came in the form of a job at Technicolor, restoring Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

To those who think of the 1989 film as a recent creation, that may be a bizarre concept. But the hand-animated film needed some help to look its best on DVD, Davis said, and the restorers had to work from a negative full of scratches and other flaws.

Jobs that came after that illustrate that digital compositing isn’t limited to explosion-heavy blockbusters. In “Defiance,” a World War II drama, he helped build a scene where a rabid dog menaces a woman. In “The Guardian,” he helped make it look as if Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher were hanging out the door of a rescue helicopter whirling over stormy seas. Digital effects aren’t always about making a splash, he said. Sometimes they’re about keeping actors safe, or editing out flaws.

For “Avatar,” he got a piece of the action through Prime Focus VFX, which hired him as a contractor. According to a Prime Focus news release, the firm had about 90 people working on “Avatar” — and it wasn’t the biggest effects company involved, by a long shot.

Much of the company’s work involved scenes shot in the “Ops Center” on Pandora, the command complex where the film’s military-industrial villains plot to overwhelm the moon’s natives. The setting involved real-world actors using computer-generated holographic viewscreens and, at times, looking out the window at the computer-generated world outside.

There were, to put it mildly, a lot of details. And there’s a subjective element that artists don’t have to contend with in real-world projects.

“I manipulate the image until it looks its best, photo-realistically,” Davis said. “This is a fantasy world. Who’s to say it wouldn’t be more blue, who’s to say it wouldn’t be less blue?”

Davis didn’t see the finished project until it hit theaters.

“I loved it,” he said. “I thought it was great.”

But, like any Hollywood artist, he’s looking ahead. He’s already done work on “The Pacific,” a miniseries from the creators of “Band of Brothers” that will air later this year.

And in the long term, he hopes to take advantage of a new Alabama law that gives tax breaks to companies involved in film production. After a few more years of making connections in Los Angeles, Davis said, he’d like to found a company doing the same work in Mobile.

After all, in the digital age, such firms don’t have to be based where the filmmakers are. It makes perfect sense to put them in places where the cost of living is low and incentives are available. Prime Focus has major operations in Canada, the United States and India. Giant Studios, which also worked on “Avatar,” is based in Atlanta.” Pixel Magic has studios in Lafayette and California, Davis said, and “the one in Louisiana gets more business.”

Lousiana and New Mexico have aggressive incentive programs that already have caught the attention of Hollywood studios. With Alabama’s incentives, “we can basically fall in line with those two states,” Davis said.

Talk about the law usually has focused on film crews doing principal photography at Alabama sites. Effects work might not be as flashy as having a director and stars paying a visit, but it can be just as lucrative. “That’s part of the budget,” Davis said. “People don’t realize it.”

“Visual effects (work) is sent all around the world,” he said. “What I can’t comprehend is why it’s being taken out of American hands.”